Long ago, I was looking at a photograph of a map that was five hundred years old, and in a section of the Atlantic there were the words HERE BE MONSTERS. It’s been stuck in my mind ever since because I found it intriguing. Obviously, the many huge deep-sea creatures, little understood at the time, were indeed monsters to whomever had drawn the map. Perhaps they had heard tales of the various monsters, or had witnessed one themselves. Monster is a word with frightening associations for most, but the problem with monsters is that, over time, we become familiar with them and they are no longer monsters, at least not in our minds.

They’re just animals.

I’m quite sure our remote ancestors were horrified when the first Blue Whale reared its gigantic head out of the water and inspected the tiny humans with its Brobdingnagian eye. But now, hundreds or thousands of years later, these former monsters are now simply an endangered specie of animal, no more a monster than they are a bird. That’s a pity because humans are now overly familiar with these sea-giants, and their familiarity causes them to be incautious, thus inviting catastrophe and disaster as the Blue Whale administers a mighty reminder that HERE BE MONSTERS with a mere flick of its fluke.

The same incaution is rampant in the religious/spiritual world. Ideas and practices, once viewed rightly with a cautious and understanding eye that sees that HERE BE MONSTERS. That caution, that sense of danger, in approaching these disturbed and disturbing ideas, is long gone in the Information Age. It’s too bad that so few warning labels are attached to ideas, because ideas, especially bad ideas, can and do spread like wildfire. Only a person willfully ignorant of human history would dispute that fact.

I firmly recall in “the sixties” when a wave of Hindu fakirs and holy men, and their Buddhist counterparts, rushed upon American soil. Older, clearer, and better educated heads tried to caution American youth from charging headlong into the core message of Nihilism contained in these systems of thought. Some heeded the warnings, many did not. Some came through the experience quite well, many did not. That, however, is not the point. There are people who die from jumping into the water from too high of a cliff, not heeding the warnings given by the laws of gravity and the reality of the surface tension of water that makes it as hard as concrete when hit at around 35 miles an hour. A speed attained from a height of merely 150 feet! Some survive these dives into danger, live to tell about it, heal, and move on. Most do not, and for those foolish youths we can only mourn or shake out heads in disbelief.

I am a fortunate survivor of Far Eastern religious/philosophical thought and practices. The practices left me largely unscathed, but the experiences left their marks. Some positive, some negative. I meditated, chanted, practiced Mindfulness, activated my Kundalini, Chakras, and Third Eye, and other esoteric practices for thirty-eight years. (Yes, even while I was ostensibly a Christian) I discovered that the warnings had been correct. At the core of any Far Eastern religion or philosophy lies the yawning chasm of Nihilism. Folks, Nihilism is nothing to get excited about, or become an evangelist for. (Evangelist anagrammed by the way is Evils Agent) Nihilism delivers exactly what its name promises: Emptiness, nothingness meaninglessness, purposelessness, and the certainty of loss of individuality either here-and-now or at death, which is well and truly The End for the “enlightened” individual in Far Eastern religions and ideologies.

Now, I am a Muslim and very happily so! Having attained to every state of consciousness and experience in every form of Far Eastern thought and practice, I openly declare to anyone who will listen HERE BE MONSTERS. I would like to report that Islam is free of the Nihilistic monsters of which I speak, but alas it is not. The Sufi is the lurking monster of Far Eastern thought slithering in amongst genuine Muslims. Folks, if you’re reading this and you’re a Sufi, be informed I see right though you and am already very familiar with what you have to say, how you say it, and what you really mean beneath your words. So, don’t even try it. I will be there to pounce and expose who you are and what you’re doing. In fact, I think that is why Allah put me through all of the Far Eastern thought and practices and experiences. To enable me to smell Far Eastern thought no matter what clothes it’s wearing or what name it’s using.

Far Eastern thought is a chameleon, a sneak-thief taking on the outward words and customs of the religion it has infected, but giving “new super-spiritual hidden meanings” to everything. Far Eastern thought corrupted Judaism with Cabbala, Christianity with New Age Gobbledygook, and Islam with Sufism. At core, they’re all peddling the same Primordial Lie that the Bible and Holy Qur’an both warn us about: Ye shall be as Gods. Or, you are God. “Say: He is Allah, the One; Allah, the Eternal, Absolute; He begets not, nor is He begotten, and there is none like unto Him.” Surah 112:1-4 Many of you have been Muslim your entire lives, or for many years. I’m a new convert of merely a few months, yet I have read verse after verse in the Qur’an that is a complete refutation and absolute REJECTION of the core claim of Far Eastern thought, and hence of Sufi thought. That matters not to one whose mind is infected with the meme of Far Eastern thought. They have “hidden super-spiritual meanings” for every word, concept, and verse in whatever Scripture they are corrupting. Tell them, “Allah says He alone is God, that He created everything, and He has no peers, parents, or children, He is the Wholly Other” and they will tell you that “You do not see the Hidden Truth buried beneath the mere husks of the words, the Hidden Kernal of Truth that All is Allah, there is naught that is not He.” (I used to say these very things when I was a creeping vine of error, strangling the life out of my spiritual victims. Of course, I didn’t see myself that way. I saw myself as an illuminator, liberator and unifier) I am literally ASTONISHED that intelligent humans who actually read and (seemingly) understand the Holy Qur’an fall for this Primordial Lie! (But, I fell for it too. The Shaytan is wily and the human ego is the size of the Goodyear Blimp, and it loves to be told that it’s God, or an emanation of God, an incarnation or God, a Son of God, and any other terms that connects it in essence and substance with the Sole Deity, Allah)

Folks, I’m new to Islam, but not to anything else. I have read a great deal of Muslim materials, as well as the Qur’an in many translations, and am advancing rapidly in both understanding and faith. I can confidently say that neither Allah nor the Prophet Muhammad communicated to us via the Holy Qur’an that we are Allah, or one with Allah, or a manifestation or incarnation of Allah, or even a child of Allah. You are a mere creature, not the Creator! In fact, the Holy Qur’an pratically SCREAMS the opposite, trying to warn you away from a belief that is your surefire ticket to the Fires of Hell! How much more EXPLCIT and OBVIOUS does Allah have to be in order to communicate something so simple to you? If you believe such blasphemous nonsense that is railed against in the Qur’an, time and time again, you are destined for the Hellfire. Hellfire does not “really mean” the Fire of Divine Love or whatever nonsense you’re being fed. Hellfire is Hellfire and it’s going to hurt like HELL. Far Eastern thought, under any name or disguise, is a backstage pass to Hell, and if you have read the Qur’an and can still tell me with a straight face that you’re a Muslim and that you’re “really, secretly, Allah” then you belong in the Hellfire for your blasphemy.

Yes, I know there are two broad categories of Sufism, one of which falls short of actually declaring “You are Allah” but the moderates are blaspheming as well by making us at least children of Allah, or emanations or manifestations of Allah, Regardless of what they’re claiming, the Qur’an is bold and crystal clear: Allah has no progeny, peers, no partners, none all. He has creations, creatures, that’s all.

If you’re caught in the web of Far Eastern thought under any guise, be it Cabbala or Sufism or New Age Blither and Blather, PM me. I will not carry on a discussion with you via the PM function, but I will give you my email address. If you’re looking to “do battle” and “show me a thing or two” I’ve already beat you to it, and I dumped what you’re into for Islam. I had taken Far Eastern thought further in thirty-eight years than you ever will. It is to those who have doubts as to their Sufism or Zen or whatever guise the Shaytan has used to entrap and beguile, that I address this essay.

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